Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The longer this interview goes on, the more Faux News host Megyn Kelly, talking (or we should say, "freaking out") with Bill Burton of the Obama Campaign, melts down.Megyn Kelly Loses It

As noted in the video, the fru-fru tizzy that has Kelly with, proverbially, Loony Tune steam coming out of her ears. is a Matted Sludge/Dead Campaign Express smear-of-the-week, pointing to a YouTube of a radio interview Barack Obama did over seven-years ago.

You click and you link to a YouTube clip titled "Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth Audio Uncovered". The clip consists of some audio - with misleading extracts of text - to a 2001 Chicago public radio interview with a very studious Barack Obama in law professor mode discussing the limitations of the court and his belief that the legislative process is the appropriate way to pursue economic justice. (Which if memory serves - accords with the conservative preference to eliminate judges who legislate from the bench.)

The phrase "Clutching At Straws" does not do justice to this very limp attempt by Drudge to erect something he can put up against Barack Obama. Alas - as Drudge is all too aware - it just won't stand up any more.

During his speech at the Al Smith dinner last night, Barack Obama once again mocked Fox News, boosting an effort to destroy the power and influence of the conservative media networks, an effort that I consider to be every bit as significant as the destruction of the modern Republican party. As noted by Kos, this continues a theme for the week where Obama mocked Fox during the debate last night and then again in the upcoming New York Times Magazine in an article by Matt Bai. This is also the continuation of a recent theme for the Obama campaign: Robert Gibbs famously ambushed Sean Hannity after the last debate in Nashville, David Plouffe recently called them the "24-hour ACORN channel" and Bill Burton has been all over their network embarrassing them over and over.

Let's consider the strategy of this for a second, because it is really smart. Obama is laying the foundation of delegitimizing Fox as a respectable news network and openly making the case that Democrats and others in the news media have been afraid for so long to say out loud, that Fox News serves the sole purpose of Republican and right wing propaganda. While this may certainly sound like an obvious point to many of us on the left, it is something that has become a bit of a taboo for people to say out loud to mainstream audiences out of fear. For Democrats, the fear is that Fox will train their sights on them and further alienate them from Fox's core Bubba audience. For the rest of the media, it is a well documented fear of the Fox's heavy handed media relations machine that intimidates other journalists from writing critical stories about the network, leaving the only critical voices about the network to come from the left from filmmakers like Robert Greenwald.

The difference with Obama is that he is not afraid of Fox. Given the platform and opportunity to take them on, he is using it, unlike the Democrats on the past. In addition to the candidate and his campaign openly mocking the network, we know that Obama knows no fear of Fox because consistent with his moral code, he let Murdoch and Ailes know he didn't respect them directly to their face as Micheal Wolffe recounted in Vanity Fair.

Yes he did.

Murdoch was said to be livid that Obama didn't come in and kiss his ring.

Then, after he said his piece, Murdoch switched places and let his special guest, Roger Ailes, sit knee to knee with Obama.

Obama lit into Ailes. He said that he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome—just short of a terrorist.

Ailes, unruffled, said it might not have been this way if Obama had more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand.

A tentative truce, which may or may not have vast historical significance, was at that moment agreed upon.

Scroll back up and watch the video again.

It can appear that Bill Burton is having fun, getting Megyn Kelly blustering and blabbering, and watching her melt down.

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About Me

J. Thomas Duffy created and lauched 'The Garlic in 2005.
Mr. Duffy is an accomplished writer, with experience as a newspaper reporter, radio writer, comedy and stand-up writer, the author of three children's books (unpublished, so far) and, and, through a good number of his writing experience, actually received payment for it.
Mr. Duffy is also a Contributing Editor on the blog, 'The Reaction' and a Contributing Writer to the blog 'The Moderate Voice.
In his spare time, Mr. Duffy likes to promulgate that is actually the dog salivating that caused Pavlov to ring the bell.